Eleven Million Wedges Later, Vokey Enters Canada's HOF

Nice tribute from Rick Young on wedge designer Bob Vokey, who entered Canada's golf hall of fame this week in the "builder" category.

He writes this with a great supporting quote from Acushnet's Wally Uihlein on the key players behind the wedge as we know it.

Eleven million Titleist Vokey designed wedges (and counting) after the very first went into the bag of PGA Tour player Andy Bean in Memphis in 1997, Uihlein believes Vokey’s place in the game’s equipment history is cemented. That point was reinforced by a short history lesson on the wedge category the Acushnet CEO indulged me with.

“This is Bob’s peer group,” he said leaning forward. “He deserves to be mentioned with Edward MacLean, who really had the first-ever patent on a wedge, with Gene Sarazen who took his inspiration for the sand wedge from MacLean, with Ben Hogan and the Sure Out, Sure On, which was the first wedge system with Hogan being the first to say, hey, the club off the fairway needs to be different than the club around the greens. From there, all due credit to Roger Cleveland. He was first to really put his toe in the water and say, I’m a wedge guy, in a full-on commercial sense. Finally you have to give credit to Karsten (Solheim) because he made the high-lofted wedge aesthetically pleasing and functional at the same time. Then there is Voke.